“You haven’t told me what you want in return for your help,” Nessa said. “And you know I’m dying, right? Can you cure my illness? If not, this will be a short-lived bargain.”
“That power is beyond me, I’m afraid. But…”
The faintest smile quirked on Clytemnestra’s lips, lighting her amber eyes.
“I told you my particular gifts. I am an accomplished mistress of poisons.”
“A worthy skill,” Nessa said, “but I don’t see how that helps either of us.”
“I think you’ll find that our ambitions are actually one and the same. Would you like to learn a secret?”
Nessa’s faint, sly smile mirrored Clytemnestra’s. She lifted her chin, just a bit.
“Always,” Nessa replied.
Clytemnestra opened her arms and embraced her. Pulling her close, softly. She brushed aside Nessa’s hair and bent her head, putting her lips to Nessa’s ear.
Then, with their hearts beating as one, she whispered the secret of poison.
Interlude
“Well?” the interrogator asked. “What was it?”
He and Carolyn had been standing in the viewing gallery while she continued her tale. They gazed out through the long windows and into the endless inky depths of the Shadow In-Between. Another flagship had joined the two hovering alongside the starboard bow. This one was a winter galleon, its worm-eaten beams sheathed in arctic ice, ragged canvas sails coated with unmelting snow.
The Kings of Man were gathering.
“What was what?” Carolyn asked, all innocence. She cradled her glass of water between her cuffed hands.
He turned toward her, impatient. “The secret. Obviously. What did the knife tell her?”
“You mean the woman. Her name was Clytemnestra.”
He rolled his eyes and flicked his fingers at her. “What did she say?”
Carolyn shrugged. “I wasn’t there.”
“Seriously,” he said.
“Seriously,” she replied. “You can tell when I’m lying. We’ve established that to your satisfaction, yes?”
“Yes. And?”
“And when I say I wasn’t there, I wasn’t there. You know that I had to recreate most of this story—all the moments I wasn’t personally present to witness—in the aftermath. I can only share the details I was able to dig up. And considering how many facts I’ve managed to piece together, I think I’ve done a damn good job so far.”
“But you were there,” he said. “You were in the cavern with the others.”
“Everything that passed between the two of them, their communion, it was over like that.” Carolyn snapped her fingers. “From our perspective, Nessa reached her hand out, she touched Clytemnestra’s blade…and then in a blink, it was finished. I only know what happened, their little mental tête-à-tête, from talking to Nessa after the fact.”
“So you don’t know what the secret was.”
“I wasn’t there,” Carolyn said.
“You know, the only reason you’re still alive is because we need answers. If you can’t assemble the missing pieces, we don’t have much reason to—” The interrogator froze. He put a finger to his earpiece. “Yes, my lord. We’ll be right there.”
Then he snorted and nodded toward the end of the windowed gallery.
“The King of Rust is ready to see you now. You may regret getting what you asked for. I think you’ll find that I was a much easier audience, and far more tolerant of your…quirks, than he will be.”
Carolyn squeezed her glass tight, fighting off a tremor in her hands. She took a breath and pushed her shoulders back.
“We’ll see,” she said. “I’m told I can be charming when I make an effort.”
Eleven
Razor-edged steel flashed, held high in Nessa’s hand as she returned to her body. The blade caught a dozen points of candlelight and threw them back, stronger and brighter, lighting the rust-red cavern in a vibrant glow. The wooden hilt felt like living flesh against Nessa’s palm, flesh over a beating heart.
Clytemnestra stood at her side. Her body was translucent, crystalline and ocean blue, a projection for all to see. Her voice emanated from the open air, thrumming off the ancient stone.
“Our pact is struck,” she said. “We are in accordance.”
“We are,” Nessa agreed. “And we have work to do. Hedy.”
Hedy stepped forward, Gazelle at her side. “Mother?”
“We’re going to carve a tiny hole in the fabric of reality. Then we’re going to go get my knight. Then we’re going to wash our hands in the blood of anyone and everyone who ever crossed us. Do I have your coven’s support?”
“Your coven,” Hedy replied.
“No.” Nessa held her gaze, her eyes grave. She waved a hand, taking in Hedy’s followers as they watched in reverent silence. “I told you before, I didn’t come to replace you or to take away what you worked so hard to build. The Pallid Masque is your coven now. So I’m not commanding you to aid me. I’m asking for your help.”
One of Hedy’s witches, a sallow-cheeked woman who called herself the Mantis, spoke up. “And we’re saying you have it.”
The others murmured their assent. No argument.
“Don’t misunderstand, I have no plans of stepping aside,” Hedy added. “But by right of seniority, by right of coven lineage, you are still the Dire Mother. Admittedly, the rules weren’t written to take reincarnation into account, but I feel safe in making a judgment call. Where you lead, we will follow.”
Nessa nodded, sharp. “Good. Make yourselves ready for travel. Daniel—”
He eased back a step, the sole of his Italian loafer sliding on the worn stone. A gust of humid air whispered through the cavern and made the candles dance.
“Actually, I have plans tonight,” he said.
“You certainly do,” Nessa said, suddenly smiling, suspiciously agreeable. Then her smile vanished. “Your plans for tonight are to obey me without question. We’re going to need resources. Funding. Precious metals. Possibly weapons.”
“Aren’t you rich? I thought you were rich.”
“My husband was wealthy. We don’t exactly have time to wait for the reading of his will, and as long as I’m a fugitive, I can’t show my face in a bank. Also, we need your local contacts. Access to a secure and private ritual site.”
“Outdoors,” Clytemnestra’s shimmering projection chimed in. “Finding a pathway is easier under the open sky. Elevated is better, too.”
“Outdoors is easy. Elevated? You noticed we’re in the middle of a desert, right?” Both women stared at him, silent. Daniel showed them his open palms. “Fine. I’ll see what I can do.”
“We’ll need something of Marie’s, to find her across the wheel of worlds,” Clytemnestra said. “Blood is best.”
“I had a few drops, but I used them up back at Pyramid Lake,” Hedy told her. “That’s how I figured out she’s still out there.”
“Something personal, then. Intensely personal. Something she treasures, close to her heart.”
“Easily done. Leave that to me.” Nessa looked back to Daniel and held up a finger. “One other thing. I understand you have certain influence with the powers of hell.”
“Told you back at the Bast Club, I can’t get the bounty called off. Once it’s in play, it stays in play.”
“No,” Nessa said, “but you have avenues of intelligence, yes? Useful information?”
“Well, I don’t mean to brag, but I am kind of a big deal in the infernal courts. I’m in tight with the right-hand woman of a demon prince.”
Behind him, Carolyn put her hand to her mouth. She proceeded to let out a delicate string of fake coughs, softly muttering between them: “He’s sleeping with her.”
“You know what?” Daniel said. “I really don’t like you when you’re sober.”
“Do something about it,” Carolyn shot back.
“My main concern is that we won’t be interrupted,” Nessa said. “I’m hoping we lost Nyx a
nd her friends back in Carson City—and encouraged a few of them to consider early retirement in the process—but we’re leaving too much up to chance as it is. Can you place tabs on them?”
“I’ll see what I can do,” he replied.
“Good. Carolyn, as the eternal Scribe, your job is to do exactly that. Follow at a safe distance, watch, listen, and record every detail. There’s a very good chance that you’ll have to tell this story after I’m gone. I want it told properly.”
“Oh, good,” Carolyn said. “I was going to do that anyway, and I’m way too old for sneaking around and pulling Nancy Drew crap.”
To Nessa’s left, Dora and the Mourner sat side by side at the wrought-iron table. Dora’s lethal cask sat out, securely capped and silent, beside the china tea service. Dora poured for the two of them, and the Mourner’s gloved fingers snaked around the delicate white curve of her teacup. The cup vanished under her veils. As Nessa looked their way, Dora leaned back and shook her head.
“Uh-uh.” Dora sipped her tea. “You don’t give orders in this corner of the room.”
“Actually,” Nessa started to say. She clenched her hands in front of her, shifting from foot to foot. “Actually, I wanted to thank you. It’s not…easy for me to admit weakness, but I don’t think I would have made it out of Carson City without your help.”
“Duh. So, you too proud to take advice?”
“Not today,” Nessa said.
“You’ve got passion, and passion is good. Passion makes shit happen. What you had in Carson City, though? That was desperation. Not the same thing. Look around. Life is chaos, right?”
“Unquestionably.”
Dora set down her cup and reached for the teapot.
“Most people go their whole lives like a loose sock in the dryer. Tossed around, flipped upside down and sideways. They don’t act, they react, never in control. This path of ours, though? Being a witch is all about calling bullshit on that and taking control. You lose your head and go off half-cocked on some death-or-glory rampage, that’s when the chaos wins.”
“I see that now,” Nessa said. “I came to the edge of losing everything, letting the Shadow swallow me whole for the sake of petty revenge. And it wouldn’t have saved Marie or served my ambitions. I’m better than that.”
Dora lifted her teacup. “Damn straight.”
At her side, the Mourner’s breath made her faded lace veils shiver.
“My sister is correct,” she hissed, “as she often is.”
Dora gave her the side-eye. “Often?”
“You have more freedom than you think,” the Mourner added. “The first storyteller cast you in this role. Authored your existence and your doom at the same time. But there are as many ways to be a witch as there are witches. And with every life, every reincarnation, you are free to reinvent yourself. What kind of witch are you this time around, I wonder? Are you letting this world define you, or have you made a choice?”
Nessa thought about that for a moment. Her mind drifted back across the journey, back to her earliest hours with her book in hand, sewing poppets, filling mason jars with iron nails and spit and menstrual blood. Baby steps. She remembered her fumbling attempts at magic on the edge of Inwood Hill Park, a tiny spot of primeval wild in Manhattan. She’d conjured there, a timid doe emerging from the wood to tease her with the promise of enlightenment before dashing off, again and again.
She’d found enlightenment, all right.
She had found it in betrayal, in the poison that her “doctor” fed her and the poison her husband poured in her ear. She found it at her own breaking point, the moment when her timidity and fear shattered on the anvil of her fury, and she decided she wasn’t going to take it anymore. The moment when the phantom doe died on the edge of her blade and her true guide, the Owl, swooped down to land upon her outstretched and blood-soaked arm.
Fury alone wouldn’t have brought her this far, though. Fury had limits, and it could leave her blind. Her magic, powerful as it was, wouldn’t win the night without focus and intuition to guide it. Nessa had a fresh spark of hope, but to kindle it into a flame she would need to rise above the forces in her way. To be smarter, faster, more cunning, more ruthless, willing to do what her enemies wouldn’t and go where they feared to tread.
The sarcophagus under Deep Six had threatened damnation upon anyone who disturbed it. She hadn’t hesitated to reach inside. And why not? Anyone who wanted to damn her would have to get in line.
She had two days left. Two days to save Marie’s life. Two days to shake the heavens and make the universe remember their names.
A tiny smile rose to her lips.
“What kind of witch am I?” Nessa said. “The unrepentantly wicked kind.”
A slithering chuckle drifted from under the Mourner’s veils.
“Then do not hesitate,” said the Lady in Red. She favored Nessa with a smoky-eyed glance and a lift of her pale chin. She nodded at Clytemnestra. “You’ve earned yourself a suitable weapon, Nessa. When the time comes to strike, strike without mercy.”
Something about the Lady set the cavern to spinning. Her jasmine perfume wrapped an invisible and silken tether around Nessa’s throat, dragging her off her feet. I know you, she thought. Where do I know you from?
The Lady’s voice echoed inside Nessa’s mind: A daughter knows her mother’s face.
“Will I see you again?” Nessa asked aloud.
“When the work is done, on the far side of the coming storm. Your education is not yet complete. I’ve given you what aid I can; the rest is in your hands.”
Hedy’s witches were clustered behind her, whispering, nudging Nessa’s apprentice. “Ask her,” one said. Hedy took a deep breath.
“Mother? We have a request. A…it’s a tradition, really, for the Pallid Masque. I know you don’t remember, but it’s important to us.”
Nessa turned to regard her. Her coven clustered around, wide-eyed, their anticipation electric.
“Of course,” Nessa said. “What is it?”
“A question. One we’ve been asking for generations, and generations before that. It’s…a blessing, sort of, or maybe a ritual for good fortune. But it’s the question that guides our coven’s purpose, and I—we—need to hear your answer. Your truthful answer, from your heart. Please.”
Nessa put her hands on her hips. “Very well. Ask your question.”
“Dire Mother,” Hedy said, “will you lead us to Wisdom’s Grave?”
Nessa didn’t hesitate. She had decided who she was and what she wanted. That meant there was only one answer, and in a breath, she committed to it.
“Yes,” she replied. “I will.”
* * *
Janine Bromowitz didn’t know the meaning of surrender. She did, however, know the meaning of running out of vacation days. Her supervisor had been burning up her phone all morning, wanting to know if and when she was coming back to work. Her scheduled shift had started at nine. Considering she was holing up in a Travelodge in downtown Chicago, eight hundred miles from the library, she wasn’t going to make it in. Tomorrow, then? She’d see what she could do.
She tossed her rolling suitcase into the back of their rented SUV, the front bumper crumpled like a wad of chewed-up bubblegum. Tony Fisher, her impromptu road-trip partner, wasn’t happy about letting her drive after their little “incident” out in New Jersey but with his arm in a sling, still healing from a bullet, he didn’t have much of a choice.
“Technically I don’t need my job,” she told him. She eased his overstuffed duffel bag off his shoulder, black nylon with an NYPD crest, and loaded it in back. “I mean, without a roommate I’m going to lose the apartment in a couple of months anyway, so realistically, staying out here and finding Marie should still be my first priority.”
Tony shook his head at her, somewhere between exasperation and sympathy.
“C’mon,” he said. “We gotta be real about this. Wherever she is, you getting fired isn’t going to bring Marie home any faster. We
tracked her this far, but a dead end is a dead end. It’s time to pack it in.”
“We know where she is. She’s in Nevada.”
Janine brandished her phone at him, cued up to a single frozen frame on a YouTube video. A gauzy black blur hurtled through a cloudless sky.
“You saw the footage. It’s Vanessa Roth, Tony. It’s Vanessa Roth flying on a freakin’ broom.”
“Okay, no. First of all, you can’t even make her face out. Second of all, that’s fake as hell.” Tony countered with his own phone. “Did you read this? Brooms-don’t-fly-dot-com. Guy breaks down the video frame by frame. It’s totally CGI. You can see the pixels.”
Janine sighed. “On a website that was bought, registered, and went up an hour after the initial footage. You know what that sounds like?”
“Healthy skepticism?”
“A cover-up.”
“There are twelve other websites saying the same thing,” he replied.
“A massive cover-up. You know who does that, Tony? The Illuminati.”
He squeezed his eyes shut and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Please do not.”
Janine’s rebuttal died on her lips as her phone rang. Her mouth fell open when she saw the caller ID.
“Holy shit. Holy shit. Hold on.” She tapped the screen and pressed the phone to her ear. “Did you fly on a broom?”
Nessa’s chuckle drifted over the line. “Good to talk to you too, Janine.”
Tony leaned in. “Is that Roth? Where’s Marie? Is she safe?”
“Where’s Marie?” Janine echoed. “Is she with you? Is she okay?”
“That’s…a complicated question. And the reason I’m calling. I need your help. I need something of Marie’s—something special—and you may be able to retrieve it faster than I can. I know she tried to deter you from following us. She didn’t succeed, did she?”
“Of course not,” Janine said.
“Good. Are you anywhere near Chicago?”
“We’re kinda there right now. At least until our plane leaves in a few hours.”
“Cancel your trip,” Nessa told her, “and listen carefully. We abandoned our car in the parking lot of a nightclub. Marie’s luggage is in the back seat. That paperback she loves—Swords Against Madness—should be inside.”
Bring the Fire (The Wisdom's Grave Trilogy Book 3) Page 9
